Home / Topics / Childhood Quotes

Childhood Quotes

Browse 4994 quotes about Childhood.

Childhood Quotes

“I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.”

Children Said Play Water White Tree Childhood Fields Clouds Surface Golden Giants Sand Dragons Customs Shore Warning Yellow Floats Dip Daisies Odor Creeks Dandelions Thistles White Clouds

Author:Williston Fish

“When we are thirsty, we drink the white waters of the pool, the sweetness of our mournful childhood.”

Water White Childhood Drink Pool Sweetness Thirsty White Water

Author:Georg Trakl

“Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.”

Source: The Training Of The Human Plant

“I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded.”

“We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air; We dug a spring in infancy Of water pure and fair; We sowed in youth a mustard seed, We cut an almond rod; We are now grown up to riper age Are they withered in the sod?”

Age Water Cutting Air Childhood Youth Pure Spring Fairs Seeds Sunny Infancy Withered Mustard Almonds Sod Mustard Seed

Author:Charlotte Bronte

“We were so poor as kids. I didn't even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode - we didn't have any of that. We started with a humble log house, milk cow, garden-raised our own food, killed a hog every year in the fall, and had the meat hanging up in the smokehouse - that was our childhood, me and ol' Si.”

Years Running Kids Fall House Water Poor Childhood Garden Hot Our Children Raised Humble Meat Milk Cows Hog Hot Water Bathtubs Running Water

Author:Phil Robertson

“it was my first doll that water went into and water came out of much earlier it was the diaper I wore and the dirt thereof and my mother hating me for it”

Firsts Mother Hate Water Childhood Dirt Dolls Diapers

Author:Anne Sexton

“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”

Firsts Children Body Water Watches Wonderful Childhood Strange Keys Sorrow Discovery First Time Experience Clean Everyday Surface Familiar Piano Shock Spontaneity Primal Piano Keys

Author:Anna Quindlen

“I wanted to deconstruct the puppet show. I wanted to turn it inside out and do stuff that you're not supposed to do. I didn't want it to be gentle like most puppet shows tend to be, since they come from childhood where you're gently trying to tell a story. I wanted to blast all that out of the water. I think there's plenty of room of any kind of attitude toward puppets. I call puppeteering acting while hiding.”

Thinking Want Trying Kind Stories Shows Wanted Turns Stuff Water Rooms Acting Attitude Childhood Plenty Gentle Hiding Blast Puppets Puppet Shows

Author:Wayne White

“One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end.”

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

Source: Road Novels 1957-1960

“Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me”

Two Water Animal Childhood Golden Eggs Immense Sheets Baskets Ark Darkening Golden Eggs

Book:Paragon Park: Turtle Swan, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, Early Poems

Source: Paragon Park: Turtle Swan, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, Early Poems

“Hooking on scuba gear and blindly diving into zombie-infested water is a wonderful way to mix the two childhood terrors of being eaten and drowning.”

Way Two Water Wonderful Childhood Terror Zombie Drowning Gears Diving Scuba

Book:The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

“Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood.”

Stills Eye Earth Water Mystery Blood Childhood Summer Rivers Seven Bless Pulse Ultima

Author:Rudolfo Anaya

“There is a part of childhood that is childish, and a part that is sacred. Suddenly we are touching the sacred part -- running to the shoreline, feeling the first cold burst of water on our ankles, reaching into the tide to catch at shells before they ebb away from our fingers. We have returned to a world that is capable of glistening, and we are wading deeper within it.”

World Firsts Feelings Running Water Childhood Cold Capable Sacred Fingers Deeper Reaching Touching Tides Shells Ankles Shoreline

Book:Every Day

Source: Every Day